Gamma-ray Constraints on Effective Interactions of the Dark Matter

TL;DR

This paper uses gamma-ray data from Fermi-LAT to set constraints on effective interactions between dark matter and standard model particles, comparing these limits with collider and direct detection results.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive analysis of gamma-ray constraints on effective dark matter interactions, integrating astrophysical and collider data for improved bounds.

Findings

Gamma-ray data constrains effective interaction strengths.

Constraints are comparable to collider and anti-matter searches.

XENON100 data provides more stringent limits on certain operators.

Abstract

Using an effective interaction approach to describe the interactions between the dark matter particle and the light degrees of freedom of the standard model, we calculate the gamma-ray flux due to the annihilation of the dark matter into quarks, followed by fragmentation into neutral pions which subsequently decay into photons. By comparison to the mid-latitude data released from the Fermi-LAT experiment, we obtain useful constraints on the size of the effective interactions and they are found to be comparable to those deduced from collider, gamma-ray line and anti-matter search experiments. However, the two operators induced by scalar and vector exchange among fermionic dark matter and light quarks that contribute to spin-independent cross sections are constrained more stringently by the recent XENON100 data.